


Black's Madness, Evans' Eyes, Potter's Hair

by OxfordOctopus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Altered Mental States, Black Madness, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Emotionally Repressed, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Madness, Mild Gore, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 04:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20352364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: ( Sirius’ eyes are knowing, sympathetic, and to an extent guilty. There is no pity there, for there is no room for pity when it comes to the Black madness, to the generational curse that haunts the family’s blood, that takes root in all members with enough of it in them. It is a curse, no doubt, and it is an old curse, a curse that was the origin of a lot of tales about witches and wizards, about them plucking the eyes out of unfaithful men and feeding thieving children to monsters.“Would you like to?” Dahlia asks, arm crooked in an offer. The body isn’t even starting to cool yet, is just barely dead, and it is as much a sacrificial offering for her - a pledge, an allegiance - as it is Sirius. She smiles a knowing smile at him, knows her eyes probably make her monstrous, standing out against the mesh of Black and Potter family traits, looking uncomfortably like her grandmother - (“But with your mother’s eyes” they say, forgetting that her mother was so much more than just her eyes) - and made all the more fey-like for the cruel glint of seaglass-green in her stare. )Sirius and Dahlia aren't so different.They are both mad, after all. It's only right.





	Black's Madness, Evans' Eyes, Potter's Hair

It begins with Peter, as too much so often does.

He’s prostrate, blubbering and wailing with words that he certainly doesn’t mean - won’t _ever_ mean, for he is incapable of being much else than a coward and a collaborator - on the floor of a shack that was, in his age, used to house a werewolf. He’s offering placations and _excuses_ for his actions on that night, hoping to smother the truth that he likely revelled in the whisper of power Voldemort granted him for his service. The moon is out of phase, two or three days from its fullest, Sirius is behind her, vibrating with an energy that his stint in Azkaban has no real excuse for.

Dahlia presses her wand into his throat, looks at him blankly with eyes she knows are so close to her mother it’s sometimes painful for certain staff to hold gaze with her. The rat falters, the glimmer of hope in the back of his eyes wavers, but doesn’t vanish. He starts crying, does a rather impressive rendition of Dobby’s more extreme self-punishment, promises to seek amends.

But Peter forgets—he always does—about one key thing.

“_Diffindo_.”

Not everyone is even capable of believing him in the first place, Dahlia especially.

Peter recoils back, gurgling with a gutted throat, hands coming up to desperately clasp at the wide rip Dahlia made. She ignores him, steps forward as he falls back, his pleas and wet gasps mixing together until it is a little of both. Wide and tearful eyes, so fearful - _so well practiced_, a little voice whispers in her skull, the one that keeps her from making friends - are hidden beneath her foot, her heel coming down against his mouth and _pressing_, muffling the dying chokes of a man who should already be dead.

Apathetically, Dahlia waits until his body goes limp, until his choked-off breathing cuts entirely, until the wailing and pleading end. She retrieves her foot, scrapes it across the half-rotten floorboards and glances back towards her godfather, towards the man who had offered his blood in ritual to her, who hadn’t thought about the consequences of consolidating Black blood - from Dorea, her ill-remembered grandmother - in a child of Lily and a Potter, the former a woman with a pragmatism that had no real end she wouldn’t go, and the latter a family known for cruel utilitarianism when it suited them and extreme violence when it was necessary. It was, after all, decided by them that they wanted their third, the one they both loved, to be as much Dahlia's parent as either of them were. 

They just didn't think about the consequences, which is fine. Dahlia doesn't mind, not really.

Sirius’ eyes are knowing, sympathetic, and to an extent guilty. There is no pity there, for there is no room for pity when it comes to the Black madness, to the generational curse that haunts the family’s blood, that takes root in all members with enough of it in them. It is a curse, no doubt, and it is an old curse, a curse that was the origin of a lot of tales about witches and wizards, about them plucking the eyes out of unfaithful men and feeding thieving children to monsters.

“Would you like to?” Dahlia asks, arm crooked in an offer. The body isn’t even starting to cool yet, is just barely dead, and it is as much a sacrificial offering for her - a pledge, an allegiance - as it is Sirius. She smiles a knowing smile at him, knows her eyes probably make her monstrous, standing out against the mesh of Black and Potter family traits, looking uncomfortably like her grandmother - (“But with your mother’s eyes” they say, forgetting that her mother was so much more than just her eyes) - and made all the more fey-like for the cruel glint of seaglass-green in her stare.

Sirius reaches out, fumbles with her wand for a moment. It must feel uncomfortable, almost unwelcome, in the man’s hands, but it will accept him nevertheless. It was, after all, a wand that had chosen her for her _connection_, her similarity, to the man who killed her family, and it too would appease a man connected to her through blood, bone and madness.

The wand cuts down, peeling away the rat’s shirt, flaying it wide open. A pudgy body is bared, thick with thin body hair in odd, unnatural patches, a consequence of staying as a rat for years on end, no doubt. Sirius’ smile becomes feral, twists his face into a mockery of her godfather, madness seeping through the damage that the Dementors left over. He doesn’t hesitate, wand spitting dismaying purple-grey as he begins.

By the time he is done, Peter hangs from the ceiling, the crown of his head stuck there with a permanent sticking charm. His slit throat weeps down his front, the red tides split by glowing cursed wounds that read out, in simple verse, “rattish snitch, who gave away our secrets”. The rhyme is a stretch, but it’s acceptable.

Dahlia’s wand feels renewed against her fingers, thrums with a hot chaos that she appreciates. She turns her head to Sirius, the man sitting almost absently on the grass, staring up into the star-filled night sky like it might explain the world.

“Leaving it for Professor Lupin?”

Sirius glances back, returning to the now. He nods.

“Does he deserve it?”

Another nod.

“Then so be it.”

Sirius returns his stare to the stars, becoming distant again. Dahlia traces his gaze, flits over the stars, portioning off each constellation like she’d been forced to in the second year. She gets lost in it, the act soothing to something in her chest, the weight and need to hurt, to carve and find retribution, it fades into the back of her skull with almost a palpable breath. She sags unknowingly, losing that stiff posture, losing the heated murmurs against the shell of her ear, the promise of _pain pain pain_.

The closest thing to peace settles into her, forcing a breathy exhale out of her. The stars are fading already, the sun sits warm and bloated on the horizon; she can’t remember where the hours went. Her eyes flick to Sirius who looks at her in rapture, in loving comfort, in a way that only two family members can.

“You have it bad.” It’s a statement, an observation. “Really bad. You don’t even have a name that helps put it off, I should – I should really teach you, take you away, so it doesn’t eat you.”

Dahlia says nothing, staring at him, absorbing the look of him and the sound of his gravelly voice.

“It’s a curse, you know.”

She did.

“From Rome, I think. Or maybe Greece, it wasn’t really clear. An old curse, for sure, the exact Taboo that inflicted it isn’t remembered - and I think that’s part of it, so that we can’t find penance for it - but it’s associated with the stars, with constellations and names and blood. My father always said it was because some anathemic ancestors of ours tried to become a god and, as a consequence, cursed us all to madness, but that’s conjecture.”

Dahlia hums in the back of her throat, canting her head to the side. She tries to rearrange her deadpan into something more emotionally available but the fatigue of the night, the relief she feels, makes it an impossible task to twist her muscles like that.

Sirius chuffs, she supposes it must be a laugh. “I really should take you away, from here, train you myself. It might be a better fate than to not know, to not have the family coping mechanisms. It’s how I remained whole-minded, and it will likely be the same for Bellatrix, if she doesn’t rot and die in that prison, which I so _dearly_ hope.” His eyes focus, for a moment, his stare cuts through her like a knife in the chest, gutting her open to look at the innards. “What’s keeping you here? With _them_?”

“Blood wards,” Dahlia recites, remembering the words of Dumbledore during her second year, after she staggered up from the Chamber with a Weasley propped up on her back, a bloodied, poisoned sword in one hand, and chunk of the Basilisk’s hide—her trophy—in the other. She had told him that she didn’t want to go back, couldn’t after that, not after she’d tasted violence, tasted the feeling of flesh giving way to steel, but he’d smiled at her and forced her back anyway, appeasing her curiosity with the tale of the wards around her house. She hated him, hated him for knowing what they did for her and thinking she must suffer anyway, that even if he might one day punish them for it, might make them _stop_, that she must languish in seeing them, in reliving her trauma on her own each time Vernon gets too close.

“Lily’s?” Sirius offers, voice too knowing.

Dahlia nods, unwilling to deny it. She didn’t _care_ about the protection, not as the shield it acted, but as a memento of her mother’s, as her last fleeting touch on a world that didn’t even remember that she had drawn a _Sowilo_ on the forehead of her child, carved runes into the walls, into the crib, to ensure that her sacrifice, her husband’s sacrifice, would be enough of a replacement for her child’s life. Dahlia remembered, of course, the echo of her mother’s intent, her memories, thrumming in her blood, to the point where she could even recall the feeling of the Sowilo being set aflame and dripping like acid into her skull, branding her in permanence to ensure she lived, to ensure that she was the anchor and that she wouldn’t die to Voldemort.

But nobody else did, of course. Because her mother was a Muggleborn, because her mother was _talented_, because they needed a figure of importance that people could rally around, that the Muggleborn population would feel separate from. Her mother, her beautiful, so powerful mother, a woman with talents few could match, rot in obscurity while others claimed she had reflected the spell all on her lonesome, instead of surviving as a consequence of overly complicated, overly _arcane_ arithmetic rituals and a once-in-a-hundred-years talent.

But, then, madness had a way of telling truths when it mattered, and by the time Dahlia had even been five years old she’d started to recall memories that weren’t her own, cutting through the bleak apathy she’d felt towards everything. Her mother was the reason why she was _alive_, not just _living_, not just _existing_ as a husk swallowed up by that detached insanity. She’d felt her excitement, her courage, her bone-deep _love_, and Dahlia knew she’d never replicate it, her body would never produce the same response, but she could chase it, and chase it she would.

“I don’t think the connection will go away if you leave, just the protection.” Sirius said quietly, thoughtfully. “That and we still have Lily’s guest bedroom in one of the old cottages, I think. That or at Andromeda’s, but, well, I don’t think she’d be thrilled to see me.”

“Do you think she would accept me?”

Sirius blinks. “Andromeda?”

Dahlia nods.

“I think so. It would just be the politics of it all, I think, that would complicate things.”

“Would it make her give me up?” Dahlia doesn’t want to know, if so.

Sirius smiles, the smile is all teeth. “You are a Black, she’ll see that with the eyes, with the way you hold yourself when the world fills you up, ‘Lia. She might not be in the family anymore, but she is your blood as far as the world is concerned. Even if it would be politically inconvenient, I think if you told her anything you told me – well, the dog version of me, anyway, that she would fight Dumbledore to keep you.”

There’s a quiet pause as Dahlia lets that settle in, soaks it up like she’s dying of thirst. Hope is an uncanny feeling, especially when most emotions had - until very recently - been smothered beneath that veil of bleak apathy, but it sits on her chest with a warmth she can’t bring herself to hate, to reject in truth.

Dahlia slides her eyes back towards the shack, pushes her hearing until she can very distantly hear the sound of blood dripping into a puddle. “Do you think they would give me a leave, if I said I watched the death of an old family friend?”

Sirius follows her gaze, grimaces, but then swaps to a thoughtful expression.

“It would be about the most helpful thing he’s ever done for you,” he conceded, sounding unhappy about it. “I think it would work, especially with a deranged madman on the loose.”

A smile, oddly coy, toys at her lips. Her cheekbones ache, the feeling unfamiliar. “Can you apparate?”

Sirius nods.

Dahlia fishes out her cloak, unfurls it in her hands, and drapes it over Sirius’ body. Half of it settles on him, turns it invisible, and cuts his body diagonally across. It’s an odd sight. “Put that on with me, side-along apparate us to Andromeda’s neighborhood?”

Her godfather frowned. “It’s not even four in the morning, yet.”

“I have a history of accidentally apparating when in distress.”

Sirius’ face went stony. “That’s not a good thing, you know? They should’ve known – that’s, that’s the fullest magic can fulfill a child’s wish when they need to get away. It requires a fear for one’s life, or at least something close.”

Dahlia shrugged, not finding it in her to be more emotive. The red blood on her chest flaked a bit, having dried. “Maybe someone simply misplaced the notification, I don’t know.”

Sirius spends a moment muttering under his breath, snarling like the dog he so very much is, before jerking his gaze up to her. “I think we can do it, but – but we should talk about that, about _this_, eventually, okay?”

She didn’t comment.

Folding the cloak over the both of them, Sirius told hold of her arm, his grip steely even if his hand reminded her of dry, fragile twigs. “This will probably be unpleasant,” he explained, voice tinted with a familiar humor. “You’ll also have to bullshit that you think your magic might’ve, I don’t know, sent you towards a blood relative you trusted, and since you didn’t trust the Dursleys, it sent you there, okay?”

Dahlia nodded.

There was a tug, then compression, a blockage in the pipe bending and then giving with a sudden and sharp break. The world spun, twisted, and then vanished entirely, leaving behind all but a corpse, a trail of blood, and the sudden alert that someone had apparated nearby.


End file.
